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Champions quick out of the gate

In Friday's preview, we noted some key historical stats, and one you will definitely want to keep in mind is the record for the most Wijk aan Zee tournament wins, currently shared by Magnus Carlsen and Viswanathan Anand, with five apiece. Anand has the upper hand for the moment, defeating the newcomer to Wijk aan Zee, Maxim Matlakov, in round one.

It's a bit surprising that Vladimir Kramnik has competed in Wijk eleven times, yet finished in first place only once — in his first attempt 20 years ago in 1998 — when he tied with Anand on 8½ / 13. In Saturday's first round, he overcame Wei Yi, who is making his third consecutive appearance in the Masters group (he finished with 6½ in 2016, and 7½ in 2017).

As usual the opening weekend of #tsct18 has drawn huge numbers of both chess players and fans to Wijk aan Zee - it's good to see a packed room here at the De Moriaan for the start of round 1. pic.twitter.com/tSa3l8XxTc

Standings after round one

Click or tap a player name to see rating progression, or on a result to open a game via live.chessbase.com

Commentary and analysis by GM Daniel Fernandez

The battle between the two rating favourites turned out to be a bit of a non-event. Black essayed the Petroff, and in a manner reminiscent of the final classical game of his title defense last year, Carlsen opted to play uncritically and take pieces off. Nobody likes to start a tournament with a loss! However, due to inefficiencies in his vacuuming procedure he found himself in some small difficulties at one point. My comments below are necessarily rather 'hand-waving' in nature, and there are no long lines.

Scarcely any world champion has managed to captivate chess lovers to the extent Carlsen has. The enormously talented Norwegian hasn't been systematically trained within the structures of a major chess-playing nation such as Russia, the Ukraine or China.

Caruana commented after the game, "I kind of felt like I don't have to force a draw. I thought I had a promising position with my knight on d5 and my pawns advancing. But maybe I was a bit too ambitious."

GM Yannick Pelletier also took a look for our daily round-up show, which you can see live at 21:00 CET (3 pm EST):

Round-up show (part 1)

Equally uneventful was the game between the English GM Gawain Jones and Carlsen's opponent from the above-mentioned encounter.

In the first ever English "Master & Amateur" ChessBase DVD, International Master Lorin D'Costa and chess-software expert Nick Murphy take you through the main ideas of the Giuoco Piano in an easy to follow, conversational style.

The final draw was arguably quieter in terms of chances for advantages, but it is a bit less boring thanks to the opening, which I have felt the need to comment on at length.

The next game was one where both myself and the engine are convinced of White's opening edge, and then suddenly it isn't there anymore. And this occurs not once but twice! The chess culture of Peter Svidler is arguably the greatest in the world, but in this unprincipled Short System position he was not able to keep a tight enough grip on his opponent's resources.

The Caro Kann is a very tricky opening. Black’s play is based on controlling and fighting for key light squares. It is a line which was very fashionable in late 90s and early 2000s due to the successes of greats like Karpov, Anand, Dreev etc. Recently due to strong engines lot of key developments have been made and some new lines have been introduced, while others have been refuted altogether. I have analyzed the new trends carefully and found some new ideas for Black.

When it comes to wins, we begin with the one I felt was least likely to happen. The second Petroff of the round was presumably Black's attempt at starting off solidly, but one cannot play for a draw against a master of draws. Nevertheless, it almost came off, and Black survived an awkward queen ending only to make an instructive mistake in a pawn ending.

Endings with rook and minor piece against rook and minor piece occur very frequently, even more often than rook endings. But there is not much literature on them. This endgame DVD fills this gap. The four different material constellations rook and knight vs rook and knight, rooks and opposite coloured bishops and same coloured bishops and rook and bishop vs rook and knight are dealt with. In view of the different material constellations Karsten Mueller explains many guidelines like e.g. "With knights even a small initiative weighs heavily". Video running time: 7 hrs. 38 min.

Next we see a game that was a bit 'all over the place'. White's tactics seem to fizzle out multiple times, but ultimately the knights are just very tricky pieces and in moves 30-40 king safety is of extra importance...

The first DVD with videos from Anand's chess career reflects the very beginning of that career and goes as far as 1999. It starts with his memories of how he first learned chess and shows his first great games (including those from the 1984 WCh for juniors). The high point of his early developmental phase was the winning of the 1987 WCh for juniors. After that, things continue in quick succession: the first victories over Kasparov, WCh candidate in both the FIDE and PCA cycles and the high point of the WCh match against Kasparov in 1995.Running time: 3:48 hours

In his post-game interview, Anand was asked about the tournament wins record shared with Carlsen, and pointed out that Magnus' wins all came in the years after Anand's last (in 2006, when Carlsen one the Challengers — then called 'Group B').

"If I win now, I'm winning after 12 years, so it's not like I've been blazing but, well, I'll try for sure."

Complete Round 1 commentary

Three also lead Challengers

Jorden van Foreest, Anton Korobov and Dmitry Gordievsky all won their respective games, to take the early lead in the Challengers group. Van Foreest was obliged to "beat up" his little brother! It's wouldn't be unusual for the arbiters to ensure siblings (or teammates) play each other in the first round, to avoid any possibile appearence of conflict of interest later on, but in this case it looks like it simply happened by chance:

Macauley PetersonMacauley is Editor in Chief of ChessBase News in Hamburg, Germany, and producer of The Full English Breakfast chess podcast. He was an Associate Producer of the 2016 feature documentary, Magnus.

See also

3/19/2018 – At the midway point, Fabiano Caruana took the sole lead after beating Levon Aronian in a wild game. Aronian seemed to be ina bit of a panic, while Caruana played very precisely, staved off the attack and took the point. Sergey Karjakin won his first game beating Wesley So and moves out of last place. Ding Liren, usually such a fighter, seems content to not lose, and drew Vladimir Kramnik after creating good winning chances. Here is the report and analyses by GM Alex Yermolinsky | Photo: World Chess

See also

3/10/2018 – The players for the next Grand Chess Tour circuit have been announced, settling the question of whether or not Magnus Carlsen would return to defend his 2017 win — he won't. The demanding schedule of the GCT was too much to commit to fully during a World Championship match year. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Video

Former World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik liked to play the French and once described it as a 'difficult and dangerous opening'. But in this 60 minutes video IM Andrew Martin suggests an aggressive and little-used idea of the renowned attacking player GM Viktor Kupreichik to counter the French: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Be3!?. Andrew Martin uses the games of Kupreichik to show why this line could catch many French aficionados unprepared and is very dangerous for Black. Attacking players will love this line and the unusual complications that it promotes.

Discuss

@Thomas Richter - OK. That's what I would've thought too, but then their pairing numbers were arranged accordingly?

chessdrummer 1/14/2018 05:54

No need to be indignant. We will make mistakes for the rest of our lives. I'm sure Macauley knows the difference, but the brains can play tricks on the best of us. Just look at Giri~Hou for example. Would we say, "Yifan, seriously you played that?? Don't you know your king and pawn endings??" We wouldn't do that.

Thomas Richter 1/14/2018 05:03

According to other sources, including Tata Steel Chess on Twitter, the van Foreest brothers were paired against each other in round 1 on purpose - "tournament rules".

Petrarlsen 1/14/2018 11:25

@ macauley : "I posted this at 2:45 AM so those readers west of the prime meridian should not be bereft of Daniel Fernandez's elucidating sapience." And thanks for that ! The number of games GM Fernandez annotates is just crazy (...I don't quite know how he can do it...), and it would REALLY be a pity to miss that !!

macauley 1/14/2018 11:07

@genem - Good suggestion! For now you can see in the link URL when hovering, but that's a poor workaround.

@the rest - "To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters." Mea culpa, and so on and so forth...I posted this at 2:45 AM so those readers west of the prime meridian should not be bereft of Daniel Fernandez's elucidating sapience. Horse sense lacking, sadly.

genem 1/14/2018 09:45

Frustrating that the table of Round 1 results does not also encode the color (White or Black) that each player played, given that the table could do so with a tiny bit of engineering or design effort.

isellen 1/14/2018 09:14

It's "They're" not "There".
Please, please, try not to be so illiterate, it's very upsetting.

Petrarlsen 1/14/2018 06:36

@ GM Fernandez : Thank you very much for your annotations ! I appreciate very much that you annotate such a number (7 !) of games ! And it is very interesting to have annotations for drawn games... All these annotations must take you an awful lot of time ; we can indeed be grateful for it !!!

Hou Yifan did it today and even Kasparov has done it in the past - miscalculate and lost a king + pawns ending. I'm glad it's not just as patzers who mess them up... king + pawn endings are not easy!!

TMMM 1/14/2018 03:16

Seriously?! You don't even check the title for errors? The author should seriously consider watching a basic video on the difference between "there", "their" and "they're" to avoid such blunders in the future. (Seriously, Macauley, you posted this?)